Leaving Houston was, as I had anticipated, difficult. For one thing, on my last day in Wisconsin, where my family and I spent the Thanksgiving holiday, I fell down the stairs of my in-law's home and broke three ribs. I was holding my too-large-to-be-carried son, Dylan, at the time and fell in such a way so as to protect him (motherhood in its finest hour). But the resulting pain was hard and debilitating. And when we returned to our little apartment in Houston to prepare for our move, my husband, Chris, had to shoulder most of the burden of packing and loading up our two cars.

For another thing, we were saying goodbye to the haven we had enjoyed during a time of intense crisis and uncertainty. I am not one to cry in public (at least not when I can help it), but found myself, repeatedly, welling up with tears and an overwhelming sense of sadness as we bade our farewells to my brother and his wife, Dylan's teachers, our landlady, and the few acquaintances we made during our time there. "Be safe," they cautioned. "Be safe," their voices echoed in my head. It was if we were venturing into uncharted wilderness. As if we were saying good-bye to our parents. As if we were leaving home...

And yet, once we arrived at our real home, our house, after an arduous drive through western Louisiana, all three of us felt euphoric. Burrowing into the place, it was as if we could not get enough of it. Chris immediately shifted into overdrive, unpacking, arranging and fixing, while Dylan embarked on a marathon play session, reuniting ecstatically with all of his old toys as if he were greeting long lost friends. As for me, I took some medication for my aching ribs (the pain exacerbated by the seven-hour drive back), poured myself a glass of wine, and stared. Stared at the beautiful colors we had painstaking chosen individually for each room of our newly renovated home, stared at the our beautifully polished hardwood floors, stared out our elegant floor to ceiling windows, stared at the Christmas lights that adorned neighboring houses, almost defiantly, as if to say "Christmas will come, in spite of Katrina..." Occasionally, I would stare at my son, immersed in his play, and observe, "Isn't it great to be back in the new house?" (a name that had stuck when we moved last spring from our "old" house by the French Quarter to our "new" house across the river), to which he would nod and reply, "We stay at the new house. This our city."

The weird thing was, this lasted for days. Except to make brief forays to the grocery store and Target, it was as if we could not leave. Clearly, this was a homecoming and we were all reconnecting with our "stuff" to one degree or another. We seemed, moreover, to be reassuring ourselves of the reality of this "home" and our stuff; to shield ourselves with it, to take it all in. It was ours, we were here, and we were deeply fatigued from being away.

And yet, when I did venture out towards the end of the week, to my office at the University of New Orleans, situated on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain, I found myself again staring, this time in disbelief. Driving the length of Elysian Fields, the boulevard made famous by A Streetcar Named Desire, and name of which refers to the heaven of Greek mythology, I gazed, stunned, at block after block of devastation. High water lines, wind damaged or flattened houses, twisted and decapitated signs, piles of debris gathered sadly in my line of vision and the years stretched before me. This New Orleans was a war zone. No matter how safe and fortunate I felt, with my family, cocooned in my miraculously preserved house, outside much of the city had been brought to its knees and virtually abandoned. I imagined life here with Dylan: the ugly brokenness, the absence of green, the abundance of trash. I imagined him adjusting to this absence of beauty, distorting his view to accommodate the unaesthetic pieces of his battered environment. Would I avoid driving in those areas of the city that were most shattered? Was that even possible? To what extent could I shield my own soul from the community's collective suffering?

My ribs ached as I wandered across the University's deserted campus and into the darkened building that houses my office. The halls were littered with trash; opened bags of cereal, empty coke bottles, wads of paper. I'd heard that the campus had been a drop off site for rescuees and that it had been widely looted, though this news had been largely suppressed by the administration. When I finally reached my office, it appeared untouched. With a sigh of relief, I seated myself gingerly and leaned forward to switch on my computer, the light at the end of the tunnel. Nothing happened. Suddenly, it occurred to me that the power was off. Of course it was off, I chided myself, the whole place was dark. This journey through hell had been for nothing except to make me aware that, at least for now, this, too, was our city, this, too, was my home.